In the "books I can't wait to read" category: Girls Gone Mild

I have been dying to read Wendy Shalit's second book, Girls Gone Mild, since I first heard about it. I've been requesting a copy since February and although one was apparently sent to me, I never received it. Grr...another is on its way (and I've heard I get mentioned in it too). This interest, and not a pejorative one, would've been shocking to me five years ago. I'm not gonna lie; I thought Shalit and her views, as expressed in A Return to Modesty, were retro and awful and bordering on evil. I'm not going to now say I totally agree with them BUT ever since I interviewed Wendy last fall for my Village Voice column on virginity and have been reading her group blog at Modesty Yours, I've been impressed with the the tenor of debate and her approach at the blog. I'm impressed that she attended a Cuddle Party (undercover) and interviewed people like Lux Nightmare for her book.

I'm especially interested in this argument:

Also for the first time, in Girls Gone Mild, we hear from the youngest feminists--teenagers who, the author says, belong to a “fourth wave” of feminists who are not finding their place in today’s third-wave feminist establishment. They are more likely to want to fight pornography than to star in it, and they look to the original feminists who believed in dignity rather than to today’s feminists leaders who encourage them to embrace their “shadow slut.”

And this:

What's wrong with the exhibitionists? Don't you think women should express their sexuality?
Some of my best friends are exhibitionists, actually. This book is definitely not meant to be a personal attack on them. The problem is that if we only focus on one narrow notion of empowerment--taking your clothes off in public, being casual about sex, that sort of wildness--then girls don't have real choices. We have to allow for another idea of empowerment, and I wanted to detail what that looks like, so girls would have an alternative ideal to aspire to.

It's not inconceivable that one could believe in a world where everyone's entitled to sexual freedom, as I do, that encompasses a range of choices from modesty to exhibitionism.

I've learned a lot from Wendy's site and her example, and while I'm sure we disagree on many things, I've found the dialogue intelligent and useful and don't see us as such polarized people anymore and if that's the one huge takeaway I have from writing my old column, I'm grateful.

Also, I'm always fascinated by fabulous author websites. Shalit's got one at www.girlsgonemild.com (with a blog, author's note, FAQ, etc.) as does (total non sequitor) the anthology Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant, which it wouldn't be an understatement to say I'm devouring. And just so I don't lose all of you more sex radical types, I will say that I also cannot wait to crack open Ellen Sussman's anthology Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave. I would say it's a contradiction, but actually, I don't think it is. I think I have a part of me that is, unabashedly, a "bad girl" in the Sussman vein, but I do also care about girls and women (and boys and men) having a range of sexual options and not being coerced into acting against their own best interests. Sorting out what's "natural" and what's culture-driven is, well, a huge task, and I'm interested in both "sides" of this debate. Shalit's work, though, I think has matured and is far more interesting to me than that of, say, Haley DiMarco, who I can basically feel the judgment coming off of via the pages of her books. It took a while but I had to learn that Wendy Shalit isn't necessarily judging me, so nor should I judge her (but I will post my thoughts about the book and hopefully get to interview Shalit soon). I meant "judge" on a personal/moral level, not judge another person's work. If we could all learn to separate the two, we'd be a lot better off.